PGF Outbox

Changing the Church Culture

Images, metaphors, pictures and stories are powerful because they plant meanings and truths accessibly in our brains.  Jesus’ parables are memorable for just these reasons.   One only has to say “mustard seed” or “prodigal son” or “light under a basket” and our minds immediately go to the truths evoked by the stories around these images.

One of the building blocks of communal culture are the images and stories that we share which explain who we are.   Families, for example, have stories—sometimes humorous, sometimes almost incidental, sometimes traumatic—which are repeated around holiday tables or in transitional moments and which remind us of who we are, how we are expected to behave and what binds us together. 

Churches also have their symbols and their stories.  Some of these, like the cross or a loaf of bread, have long histories and have found a home throughout the entire Christian culture.  These have both wide community meanings and more individual associations, but they nevertheless shape who we are and how we look at the world.  Other stories are far more focused toward a single community.  These may include a particular building or architectural feature, or a repeated story about a key event in the life of the congregation. 

Good preachers and teachers use strong images, metaphors and stories to strengthen their communication and to help listeners remember what has been said.  Indeed, sometimes the story can eclipse the point, because stories can tug at mind and heart together in a way that propositional truth alone cannot.  Recently I overheard one man speaking to another as he was exiting one of my classes, “I’m not sure what point he was making, but that was a great story.”  Oops.  Maybe that story needs a new home.

The point of all of this is that if we are going to be culture changers, we need to find the right images and metaphors to anchor various elements of the new culture in the minds and hearts of our churches.  And then these elements of story need to be frequently repeated so that people begin to associate whole clusters of new meanings with the image.

Around our church we are trying to become a more “missional” church.  But the word “missional” doesn’t conjure up clear meanings in the minds of most of our people.  Even explaining the term often doesn’t help, because our explanations are imprecise and they vary every time we try to clarify the meaning.

But recently we have been using an image which is new to us to explain the “missional church.”  “How do you see the church?” we ask.  “Is the church like a cruise ship whose mission and staff are focused on attracting people to its own programs and giving people a good time so that their consumer impulses are satisfied, their felt needs are cared for, and they believe that their money has been well spent?  Or is the church an aircraft carrier whose mission and staff are focused toward equipping and empowering our people for their ministries every day in the world?”

On aircraft carriers there is a spirit of anticipation, readiness, and a communal life which is intensely supportive, but outwardly focused.  The mission of an aircraft carrier is not to entertain but to equip—not to attract, but to deploy.  Aircraft carriers evaluate success not by the number of people who come onboard, but rather the number of missions engaged.  On an aircraft carrier people listen intently for the orders of the Commander in Chief, rather than sitting in the sun waiting for the next activity on the schedule.

We are discovering that to change our culture, we have to change the way that we think about “the church.”  And one way that we facilitate that change is to provide new images, metaphors and stories to create new associations in the hearts and minds of our community. 

What are your metaphors or stories for what it means to be the “missional church”?

THIRD PRES HOLDS FIRST ANNUAL "VISION CONFERENCE"

Why did 1300 people gather together at Third Presbyterian, Richmond to talk vision?  In Senior Pastor Steve Hartman’s words, “Without a vision, the people perish.”   So Third Presbyterian held their first annual “Inside-Out Vision Conference” January 11-13, 2008. Dr. Mark Labberton, pastor of First Presbyterian in Berkley, California, was their conference speaker. The inspiration was attending the 2006 PGF conference in Atlanta. They set in motion the goal to bring the message of simultaneous inward and outward focus back to their own church in Richmond.  They set out to reframe their church structure, basing it on the “inside out” model, and to put together a new mission statement centered on that concept.  From this reframing process came the idea to hold an annual conference to calibrate and recalibrate Third Presbyterian to their mission statement as well as involve lay people in an excellent, congregation-wide experience.

 

Lead as a Presbytery in a Post-Denominational Setting

The Way Forward Work Group asks that the Presbytery of San Diego receive and implement the following report:

Work Group Chair: Rev. Dr. Mike McClenahan

Tasks (From the Task Force on the Way Forward Final Report Adopted by the Presbytery of  San Diego on November 21, 2006):

1.  Lead  as a presbytery in a post-denominational setting – Engage our entire presbytery and its member congregations in a process of education and reformation as we recover the church’s missional identity which is best  defined as being inwardly strong and outwardly  focused. Consider how to survive and thrive in this emerging post-denominational culture. Re-invent our presbytery meetings, gatherings, and communications to make them missionally relevant and supportive. Annually evaluate the missional effectiveness and progress of our presbytery and member churches with regard to church health, congregational growth and vital ministries that  further the Kingdom of God here on  earth.

2. Create a new way of being a presbytery – Explore such possibilities as realignment within geographic areas based on like-mindedness; parallel presbyteries within the synod; blessing and releasing one another to separate ministry and mission – modeled after Paul and Barnabas.

 Report and Recommendations:

 The post-denominational setting of the communities we serve provides an opportunity for us to learn together to be missional churches supported with the Presbytery of San Diego. A missional church is “a community of God’s people that defines itself, and organizes its life around, its real purpose of being an agent of God’s mission in the world,” (Alan Hirsch). Our presbytery will focus on education and gatherings that leads to missional transformation.

 Our recommendations:

 1. Pilot Missional Leadership Gathering of pastors, elders, and staff who meet monthly around God’s Word and resources to gain insights of missional church and to pray for each other’s ministries.

 2. Pilot Missional Church Project with 5-6 congregations who join together over 18 months. The pilot includes the mission-shaped congregation survey and the mission-shaped pastor leader survey.

3. Pilot Missional Pastor Project where we invite 5-6 pastors to join together over 12 months. The pilot will include the mission-shaped pastor leader survey.

 4. Affiliate with the Presbyterian Global Fellowship(PGF) as a presbytery, a movement within the PC(USA) “to transform mainline congregations into missional communities following Jesus Christ.”

 5. Encourage sessions to affiliate with the PGF and celebrate those churches at presbytery meeting beginning May 2008.

6. Attend the Inside Out Conference presented by PGF in Long Beach,   

CA, from August 14-16, 2008. Our goal is for two thirds of our churches in attendance.

7. Redesign Presbytery meeting. The Vision Team of Council will redesign presbytery meetings to create a culture of celebration, missional transformation and learning, including

Sharing God’s Word and praying for our churches and the world,
Celebrating stories of missional change, growth and learning,
Inviting a broader cross section of our ordained leadership to attend.
Currently elders who work are not able to participate in Presbytery meetings.
Encourage churches to nominate next generation elders as presbytery representatives,
Limiting the work of presbytery to essential business.

 This document was approved March 11, 2008, at a regular stated meeting of the Presbytery of San Diego.

 

The Presbytery of San Diego Declaration

As of today, we, the Presbytery of San Diego declare that we are no longer primarily a governing body. We declare that we are a relational community and that we are becoming a mission agency.

 THE PAST/A GOVERNING BODY: In recent years, our Presbyterian Church (USA) has described the identity of presbyteries as governing bodies. This gives the impression that the main reason we come together is to govern ourselves. It suggests that rules, regulations, and policies are what is most important about our life together. This is probably a result of the corporate and regulatory model of church that our denomination has followed in the twentieth century. While this may have been sufficient in the past, it does not describe who we are today or who we hope to become in the future. While we will continue to govern as needed, it is not the primary adjective that defines who we are. Our polity alone cannot be the reason enough for us to meet together.

 THE PRESENT/A RELATIONAL COMMUNITY: The main reason we as a presbytery come together today is for relationships: our relationship with God through Jesus Christ, our relationships with personal friends, and the relationships that congregations have with one another. It is through our God-given relationships that we experience joy, sorrow, purpose, fulfillment, and hope. Our connections are providing a bridge for us towards our emerging future. As a relational community, we will emphasize listening, learning, and praying. We have taken vows to abide by the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and we will continue to do so, lovingly holding one another accountable in relationships. Our polity helps us set up appropriate boundaries for our relationships. It is a means to an end, it is not an end in and of itself. We see the value of being a part of a connectional system with other presbyteries and other communities who share a similar identity in Christ.

 THE FUTURE/A MISSION AGENCY: Our dream is that we will learn to become a mission agency together. As the early church laid hands on people and sent them out in mission (Acts 13:1-3), we hope to do the same. We live in a mission field and all of us are sent by God into it. God has a mission and God’s mission has a church. We hope to discern what God is doing in our world and Join Christ in the mission He has already initiated. We hope to learn new skills for new forms of mission for this new millennium. We hope to launch new missional experiments to discover together how God’s Holy Spirit is leading us. We want to be a sent people who are shaped by God’s mission, energized by God’s mission, and defined by God’s mission. The reasons we will come together is to discern where and how to be in mission together. We hope to connect with other mission agencies in California, the
United States, Mexico, and around the world, extending the Kingdom of God here on earth. As we move into our new future, we desire to be both humble and bold. We are humble because we do not have all the answers, we are learning as we go, and we know we need each other’s wisdom and insight. We want to be bold because we do not want to be trivial or waste our time on what is not important. We long to make a difference in the world.

This statement was approved on March 11, 2008, at a regular stated meeting of the Presbytery of San Diego.

Rev. Dr. Clark D. Cowden, Executive Presbyter

 

What Makes a Church Missional?

J. Todd Billings, a professor of theology at Western Seminary, has written a good, brief contribution to the ongoing to discussion of this question in the latest Christianity Today.  Billings summarizes an underlying theme of his article this way: "With so many variant views, the term missional church now needs something like an FDA label: Warning: Contradictory and conflicting views of the church inside."

But Billings goes beyond the confusion and helps outline some of the original intentions of the book that made the term famous (the 1998 book, Missional Church, edited by Darrell Guder).  And he compares those intentions with a variety of recent approaches that seek to capitalize on the "missional movement."  Some , in their fervor to emphasize the Kingdom of God as the central focus of God's mission, tend to preach the Kingdom without the King.  Others fall prey to the temptation of discarding the majority of Christian history as hopelessly captive to "Christendom."  Instead, Billings offers some constructive hints for how the missional conversation can shed new light on the significance of key aspects of the traditions within Christianity, and he points us toward a robust understanding of our participation in God's mission.

If you read the article and have bones to pick (it's bound to stir some people up), then submit a comment here and I'll be happy to engage in a conversation about it.

Check out the article here.

It's Time To Let Go!

Last night I was reading Nemo to my 3 year old. Right in the middle was a scene that jumped out at me. For those of you who don't dine regularly with a 3 year old and 4 year old in full princess regalia at the breakfast table, Nemo is the star of a Disney film.